A great scary film!!!

Rating: 9/10 (30 June 2003)

At last, I waited enough and ran over to the nearest theater by my apartment to check it out as soon as it got released. All the pieces of information that I read on the papers and the Internet gave me an enough insights of the film '28 Days Later...' I just wanted to see it myself so that I could say it was more than what I was waiting for.
Danny Boyle. To me he is one of only two contemporary directors whom I adore from the U.K., and the other one is Guy Ritchie. I don't know what Guy Ritchie will do in order to make up for what he did with the last miserable failure film ever???!!! However, Danny Boyle didn't disappoint me with 'the Beach' last time not as bad as most of critics and fans would think. So, as soon as I saw the trailer of 28 Days Later, I got hooked into it right away and knew something would be different this time.
So there was I. I was sitting among those who wanted to catch the Boyle's new film on the last Sunday of June. On top of hearing all the great backdrops, like it was a biggest sleeper hit in the U.K. last year since it was opened in November and such, the sort of different genre that Boyle was interested in was enough of a catch for his fans, including myself.
The film begins with a scene where some monkeys are locked up in a small glass tanks and tied up on the operation beds, being forced to watch repeated montage sequences of very disturbing and violent scenes, such as riots, fights, war, and etc., on several monitors. And then activists break in to free them but what they didn't know was how bad these monkeys' conditions are, with something called 'rage.' In spite of a lab scientist trying to prevent the monkeys from being freed by these activists, one of the activists unlocks one of the glass tanks. Then it all begins. (I think that is enough of a start...)
What I like about Boyle's films is that he always works on characters more than stories. To me, how he develops each story is that he gives his characters a choice to make and then lets it unfold on its own. Maybe the genre was different but his way of telling a story was the same, like his other films, such as Trainspotting and Life Less Ordinary and even The Beach.
One thing that I liked the most in this film was the twist.
Jim, our main character, and other survivors (Frank, middle-aged former taxi driver and Hannah, his daughter, and Selena, who saved Jim at the first place and became his love interest) were running away to survive from these creatures (something rather than human after being infected with this rage) who would attack and eat them up alive or have them infected and make 'em become one of them to the place where they think they will be protected by the army.
Eventually when they got there, it was the beginning of the next trouble they were about to face. These soldiers wanted to have sex with the two girls by force in order to protect them, and Jim was not happy with the idea and was thrown away to a remote area to get killed. But, he managed to escape and came back with vengeance. Now he became the chaser, not the runner. He was the one who wanted to kill these soldiers to save the two girls. As a strategy to make them confused, Jim freed the strained soldier who got infected but didn't get killed earlier...
The film was shot on video and looked pretty awesome to me. Although there were some scenes that I was thinking would've been greater if they were shot on film. As you know, with not enough of lighting (and even with enough lighting), shooting on video loses lots of details and crispness. However, I appreciated how it was shot and how each shot was composed as far as cinematography.
It was an absolutely ming-boggling experience. I wasn't overall scared too much of the film but there was one scene where Jim decided to go into a burger restaurant while other survivors was getting gas from an abandoned gas tank truck. I asked myself why he was going in there? It was dark in there, which means these infected creatures must be in there... and so on. For a very brief moment, but I was scared. And I believe that is how Danny Boyle explores his characters.
Get scared!!!